www.elsblog.org - Bringing Data and Methods to Our Legal Madness

14 November 2006

Judge data for federal trial court outcomes

Christy Boyd, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, put together directions for quickly merging the AO data on thousands of cases with the name of the case and the judge's name, available on her webpage. You need to pick only a district and one or more nature of suit codes. The method requires a PACER subscription; you'll be charged $.08/page of output, unless you have a fee exemption (sometimes available by asking the Chief Judge of the district.) Christy used her method to gather the data underlying her draft on "The Effect of Judge Sex on Case Disposition Method in Federal District Courts."